Spotlight Cloud Blog

4 Steps to Setting Up Your New Database Performance Monitoring System

Now that you have your new database performance monitoring software, it’s time to get started. As your company’s database administrator, you’re sure to be excited about new settings, the shiniest new features, and smart monitoring with clear server readings.

But you may be wondering where to start. Setting up any new system can take some time, but a bit of quality onboarding will pay off greatly the longer you use your monitoring system.

Let’s take a look at some basics:

Decide which instances need your utmost attention.

Arguably, every database needs monitoring. Unfortunately, you may not have the budget to cover all databases to start or you may need to prove the value of a monitoring and diagnostic systems to the budget holders before you can ramp up your coverage. Carefolly select the first monitored instances. Look for those databases that underpin critical systems or processed in your organization that will be seen by a large and/or influential group of users. Dedicate your efforts to making their life easier with more reliable and better-performing databases. A sales team that sees less frequent outages of faster reporting from a CRM or billing system will become your greatest evangelists for higher quality, more comprehensive monitoring, diagnostic and tuning capability.

Run through the prerequisites. Know your system requirements.

Because Most diagnostic servers such as Spotlight Cloud is a SaaS solution it does involve a data upload. Check the Deployment Guide for ports that are required to be open/require internet access. Consider installing your server on a computer that’s always switched on, then downloading the associated apps onto your phone and tablet for easy, on-the-go monitoring. The Spotlight Cloud Diagnostic server installs onto an operating system hosted by Microsoft Windows.

Download the installer.

Of course, you can’t get started on the nitty-gritty performance monitoring part of the equation without first downloading your database monitoring system’s installer. For on-premise systems, this can be quite laborious as you need to set up your data collection, your performance repositories, and your reporting repositories.

Thankfolly it’s a quick and easy process for Spotlight Cloud. Because it is SaaS, we take care of the repository for you . The only thing you need to do is download the diagnostic server. The diagnostic server is an agentless data-collecting service that gathers performance metrics from your monitored connections. To do this, sign in to the Spotlight website with your Quest account and click download. That’s all there is to it!

Add connections

Once the installer has finished, your next step is to add connections and configure them. For example, you’ll add connections to the SQL server, Windows server, and other connection types. For Spotlight Cloud, you’ll open a configuration tool that links to the connection manager. To start,just add your connections and start gathering data. Later, you can come back and play with the many configuration options that are designed to make your life easier (e.g. you can marks times for planned outages so that you don't get alarms during these times, you can configure alarm thresholds or you can create alarm roles to suit your environment). The good news is that these all come pre-configured so you can get up and running almost immediately. To learn more about configuration, check out our Configuration Guide.

Now, you are ready to start monitoring and diagnosing issues.

Now, your database performance monitoring software shoold be up and running! Track your system easily and don’t hesitate to reach out to your support team with any questions you may have. Check out our introductory monitoring guide.

Don’t forget to set up Spotlight Cloud on your mobile device. Just download the Spotlight Cloud Android or iOS app and sign in. It’s as easy as that!

Monitoring all of your company’s technology so it doesn’t go out of date has probably been something you’ve been avoiding… But updating and “future-proofing” those systems can save you ample time as a DBA. Learn how to get started and save time: